Peter Vantine, PhD

M.A., Ph.D. University of Wisconsin-Madison
DEA Université de Genève (Switzerland)
B.A. Amherst College

I joined Saint Michael's College in the Fall 2011 semester. I have taught at The University of Saint Thomas (MN), Macalester College (MN), and Indiana University. I have lived in Paris and Dijon, France, as well as in Geneva, Switzerland. Among other scholarly projects, I am working on a book tentatively titled Entre fantaisie et réalisme: texte, contexte et métatexte dans les premiers romans et les nouvelles des frères Goncourt (Between Fantasy and Realism: Text, Context, and Metatext in the Early Novels and Stories of the Goncourt Brothers).

Courses I Teach:

Topics in French Culture: French Humor; Paris – City of Shadow, City of Light

Topics in French Literature: The French Novel; The Nineteenth-Century French Novel

Motivations:

Having myself chosen to attend a small liberal-arts college as an undergraduate, I believe deeply in the value of a closely-knit academic community in which professors are wholly engaged in the life of the college, and in which learning thrives within and beyond the walls of the classroom. In addition to helping students acquire concrete language skills and analytical abilities at all course levels, I strive to share my enthusiasm for and insights about French language, culture, and literature.

While my research on nineteenth-century French literature always informs my courses on that particular historical period, more generally my scholarly endeavors feed my own intellectual curiosity, passion, and critical judgment, which I then hope to inspire in my students. Futhermore, I attempt to remain up to date with work on foreign language acquistion and pedagogy, while also sharing my own experiences with colleagues both informally and at conferences. I believe that excellent teaching is always a work in progress, a constant process of renewing, reworking, and refining one's practices. Students, in turn, are not only the targets of such efforts but are also sources of invaluable feedback about how to improve them.